Customer Reviews

Tank Tactics: From Normandy to Lorraine (Art of War)

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This work compared and contrasted the armored doctrine of the US, British, Canadian, Germans, and Soviets. Although its focus was on the creation of North American armored forces, (US and Canadian), it discussed in detail all the nationalities mentioned above. I especially enjoyed the comparison with Soviet operations which occurred during the same period. I've read many books over the years seeking answers to what defines the concept of a "tank" and how is that different from the concept of "armor" and what happened to the US Cavalry tradition in the development of the US tank forces. Mr. Jarymowycz answered all my questions. His style is very readable, so much so, that I devoured his footnotes at the end of each chapter gleaming more nuggets of information. I plan to buy this work as an essential reference to my military history library.

This is not, as one might think from the title, just a book about either tank tactics (how small tank units behave in combat), or just about Normandy and Lorraine operations by the Allied forces in 1944.

COL. Jarymowycz offers an extraordinarily deep and well researched work that traces the development, or rather lack there of, of armoured doctrine and its tools of the trade, the tanks, in the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States, and compares this development with those in Germany and the USSR in the pre-war period, and the early years of the war. He then shows that inter-branch rivalry and disinterest in the Anglo-block countries by their higher Staff officers, a lack of insight into lessons learned in 1940 France or during the North African campaign, and the ignoring of the Eastern Front intelligence led to tank forces which landed in Normandy untrained for the sort of tank warfare that had been conducted on the Eastern Front for some three years, lacking in operational and strategic doctrine for employing tank forces, and lacking the tanks with which to combat new German panzers.

Jarymowycz destroys some well-known myths about the Allied successes, German military prowess and a belief in Soviet ineptitude that persisted in NATO until the late 1970s when John Erickson and Richard Simpkin begun to shed light on the subject.

The book offers a very good focused comparative study companion to the many books on the use of operational and strategic armoured forces on the Eastern Front by Richard Simpkin and David Glantz.

For those interested in how and why the Second World War was won in Europe, this is an invaluable and must-read book.

COL. Jarymowycz had given us a very insightful book that explains the "whys" of so many questions that have dogged our understating of several battles. In that way, this book was a scholarly epiphany of sorts for me.

Jarymowycz's stated purpose was to trace the development of Tank (or Armored) doctrine in North America. Or rather, how two very similar peoples solved the same question - how to fight tanks.

Ultimately, Jarymowycz thesis is that no one got it right except for the Soviets (and the Germans only partially so). A claim that's hard to dispute given the historical record of great strategic offensives that the Soviets executed on the Eastern Front and the way the Allies muddled through and allowed opportunities like that at Falaise to slip the bag.

And that is the true value of this book, it explains why the western Allies missed so many opportunities, they were hampered by doctrine that did not provide their commanders with the proper operational toolset to exploit situations.

Jarymowycz notes that because of her size, Canada didn't suffer from the debilitating debates that so dogged Tank development in the UK and US, but also notes that the small size of her Army kept her from asking the question in the first place; hence, the Canadian Army punted off to Great Britain.

Given the lengths that Montgomery went to prevent the British habit of Tank units impaling themselves on Rommel's anti-tank guns in North Africa it is not surprising that a doctrinal mindset that essentially ignored the breakthrough phase arose under his guidance. Once this is understood then suddenly one can identify the "whys" of what happened at actions like Villers-Bocage, Goodwood, Totalize, and (if one extrapolates) why the Guards Armored failed to exploit after the Nijmegen Bridge was taken during Market-Garden. It's not that these men were not brave (they were) it's not that their commanders were fools (they were not), it's that their training had not properly prepared them to use the tools (Armored Units) correctly.

The Americans suffered from a similarly poor concept of how to fight tanks. In the United States this process of doctrinal development was a messy affair that pitted Cavalry, Infantry, and Artillery against one another. This contentious process formally resolved the dilemma that resulted in the poorly conceived Tank Destroyer doctrine (tanks don't fight tanks) and the concept of the exploitation tank that was realized in the now famous and vulnerable Sherman.

There is an old joke in the US Army that has a German General complaining that American's were unpredictable and difficult to fight because they don't follow any established doctrine and the quote is followed with the admonition "Good Work!" It was this atmosphere in the American army that allowed a few far thinking Generals such as Patton, Woods, and Collins (to name a few) to chuck the bonds of poor doctrine that bound Infantry School Instructors such a Omar Bradley. And Jarymowycz clearly shows that in the American Army, Armored success was personality driven, not doctrinally.

I do have some bones to pick with Jarymowycz, he's wrong when he claims that Omaha wouldn't have been so bad if the American' hadn't been so stubborn against DD Tanks (I hope he never makes that claim at a reunion of the 741st Tank Bn which lost 27 DD Tanks at Omaha). He also makes similar claims that the US Army had an ant-Firefly bias (not that the availability of the very complex ammunition didn't have anything to do with it).

But beside this, Jarymowycz's book is very good at explaining how a failure in British/Canadian (and to a lesser extent US) doctrine resulted in so many lost opportunities at Normandy.

A great book.

The book is a study of tank operations and doctrinal development of the Western allies, primarily US & Canada. I have to say I found the book a big disappointment. To begin with, there are numerous factual errors and they always seem to be errors skewed to prove his hypothesis. For example, in his comparison charts on US and German tanks he lists the Pzkw IV as having a road speed of 38 mph (should be kph) and a cross-country speed of 25 mph (which is a complete fiction, the best stat I could find is 11 mph). By this table the King Tiger was more maneuverable than the M4, the Firefly or the M-10!!! His thesis is that the US, Canadians, and Brits were almost all technologically primitive, tactically incompetent, and strategically retarded. The Germans and the Russians had it right. Patton is about the only one who comes out OK. One really wonders why we are not all speaking German.

To be fair, some of the author's discussion of how the armored forced of the US/Canada evolved prior to D-Day was decent (which saved it from one star), but once the battle is engaged the book falls apart.

I really like to read this book. Every page is a eyeopener for me. I have more than 600 books and this is one of the better one's i own. It's informative, it has drama and it has style.

This is the first review i write so don't burn this one down. It's a interesting view this book has. The information around the book is also very nice. I think i buy a lot of other books that are mentioned in the notes after each chapter.

I haven't read the Stackpole version, but it is telling that my version includes a foreword by a leading British tank commander of the war who, exceptionally politely, totally disagrees with the author.

His information on British tank organisation and operations is abysmally wrong and almost every statement he makes about them is easily disproved. All-in-all the book comes across as a man with an axe to grind and no compunction at all in choosing his 'facts' to support his position.

This book could be great, but its flaws are so great that unless you know the topic already, you will only be lead astray by his apparent knowledge and factual arguments.

Overall, I agree with the foreword. Its total rubbish.

This is an excellent work from a writer who knows his material well. Enjoyable to read, it adds a new dimension in the discussion for the Normandy campaign.

I could not make it through this book. I kept trying to jump to an interesting part so I skipped around. I read about half overall. I tried to get through it 3 different times. I could not find anything that was interesting in this book. I would not call this a book on tactics at all. It glosses over the battles and really tells nothing.


I'll summarize a typical chapter:

The british deployed two up one back. The frontage for each unit was narrow. The germans were better at long range. The British did bad and lost. end of chapter.